Frederick Noronha / THE PRINTED WORD
Directories help us fine our way around. Directories are useful, or even indispensable. Yet, in our cash-rich, fund-wasting but information-poor Goa, we have only a limited number of directories available to use.
BSNL recently managed to come out with its official telephone directory after years, and years. Was it six or seven or eight years? Too long to count…. Business chambers and yellow pages’ publishers manage to come out with their’s fairly regular; they understand the power (and wealth) linked to information.
Some years back — quite a long time back actually — the Panjim-based publishing firm Rajhauns Vitrans, with help of journalist Shashikant Punaji and others, also put together a cultural directory of Goa. But that was in an era (perhaps in the early 1990s) when telephone services were only just making their presence felt in Goa, leave aside email and the Internet which was completely lacking then. So, it would naturally have a rather limited impact. Continue reading
